On poetic interpretation of nature

by John Campbell Shairp

CHAPTER V.
HOW FAR SCIENCE MAY MODIFY POETRY.

It may be worth while to dwell a little longer on the way in which Poetry and Science respectively deal with external Nature, noticing in what respects their methods agree, in what they differ, wherein they seem to modify each other, and how each aims at a separate and distinct end of its own.

The first thing to remark is, that in the presence of Nature the poet and the man of science are alike observers. But in respect of time the poet has the precedence. Long before the botanist had applied his microscope to the flower, or the geologist his hammer to the rock, the poet’s eye had rested upon these objects, and noted the beauty of their lineaments. The poets were the first observers, and the earliest and greatest poets were the most exact and faithful in their observations. In the Psalms of Israel and in the Poems of Homer how many of the most beautiful and affecting images of Nature have been seized and embalmed in language which for exactness can not be surpassed, and for beauty can never grow obsolete! Indeed, fidelity to the truth of Nature, even in its minutest details, may be almost taken as a special note of the higher order of poets. It is not Homer but Dryden who to express the silence of night makes the drowsy mountains nod. It is a vulgar error which supposes that it is the privilege of imagination to absolve the poet from the duty of exact truth, and to set him free to make of Nature what he pleases. True imagination shows itself by nothing more than by that exquisite sensibility to beauty which makes it love and reverence Nature as it is. It feels instinctively that “He hath made everything beautiful in his time;” therefore it would not displace a blade of grass nor neglect the veining of a single leaf. Of course, from the touch of a great poet, the commonest objects acquire something more than exactness and truth of detail; they become forms of beauty, vehicles of human sentiment and emotion. But before they can be so used, fidelity to fact must first be secured. They cannot be made symbols of higher truth unless justice has first been done to the truth of fact concerning them. Hence it is that the works of the great poets of all ages are very repositories in which the features and ever-changing aspects of the outward world are rendered with the most loving fidelity and “vivid exactness.” This is one very delicate service which genuine poets have done to their fellow-men. They have by an instinct of their own noted the appearance of earth and sky, and kept alive the sense of their beauty during long ages when the world was little heedful of these things. How many are there who would own that there are features in the landscape, wild-flowers by the way-side, tender lights in the sky, which they would have passed forever unheeded, had not the remembered words of some poet awakened their eye to look on these things and to discern their beauty! Who ever now sees the “wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,” and notes the peculiar coloring of the petals, without a new feeling of beauty in the flower itself, and of the added beauty it has received since the eye of Burns dwelt so lovingly upon it!

The observation of the world around them in those early poets, clear and transparent, was instinctive, almost unconscious. It proceeded not by rules or method, but was spontaneous, prompted by love. What Mrs. Hemans finely says of Walter Scott among his own woods at Abbotsford, may be said of all the great poets in their converse with Nature—

“Where every tree had music of its own,

To his quick ear of knowledge taught by love.”

Likely enough it will be said, that spontaneous, child-like kind of observation was all well enough in the pre-scientific era. But now, in this day of trained observation and experiment, have not the magnifying-glass of the botanist and the crucible of the chemist quite put out the poet’s vocation as an observer of natural things? Have not these taught us truth about Nature, so much more close, exact, and penetrating, as to have discredited altogether that mere surface observation which is all that is possible to the poet? In the presence of this newer, more sifting investigation, can the imagery of the poets any longer live? Has not the rigorous analysis of modern times, and the knowledge thence accruing, abolished the worth and meaning of that first random information gathered by the eye?

In reply, may it not be said the observations of the poet have real meaning and truth, but it is a different kind of truth which the poet and the man of science extract from the same object? The poet, in as far as he is an observer at all, must be as true and as accurate in the details he gives as the man of science is, but the end which each seeks in his observation is different. In examining a flower, the botanist, when he has noted the number of stamens and petals, the form of the pistil, the corolla, the calyx, and other floral organs,—when he has registered these, and so given the flower its place in his system, his work is done. These things, too, the poet observes, and in his descriptions, if he does not give them a place, he must at least not contravene them; but he observes them as means to a further end. That end is to see and express the loveliness that is in the flower, not only the beauty of color and of form, but the sentiment which, so to speak, looks out from it, and which is meant to awaken in us an answering emotion. For this end he must observe accurately, since the form and hues of the flower discerned by the eye are a large part of what gives it relation and meaning to the soul. The outward facts of the wild-flowers he must not distort, but reverently observe them; but, when observed, he must not rest in them, but see them as they stand related to the earth out of which they grow, to the wood which surrounds them, to the sky above them, which waits on them with its ministries of dew, rain, and sunshine,—indeed, to the whole world, of which they are a part, and to the human heart, to which they tenderly appeal.

On this wide subject, the bearing of scientific on poetic truth, I know not where can be found truer and more suggestive teaching than that contained in Mr. Ruskin’s great work on Modern Painters. Each volume of that work, which has influenced so powerfully the painting of our time, has much to teach to the poet and to the student of Poetry. In the Preface to the Second Edition many of the principles expanded throughout the work are condensed. From that Preface I venture to quote one or two passages which throw much light on the subject of our discussion:—

“The sculptor is not permitted to be wanting either in knowledge or expression of anatomical detail.... That which to the anatomist is the end is to the sculptor the means. The former desires details for their own sake; the latter that by means of them he may kindle his work with life, and stamp it with beauty. And so in landscape: botanical or geological details are not to be given as a matter of curiosity or subject of search, but as the ultimate elements of every species of expression and order of loveliness.”